The Daily Source of Urban Planning News

Exxon's CEO has joined Al Gore, Dr. James Hansen, and others on the forefront fighting climate change in requesting a carbon tax, though they make in clear it should be in lieu of cap & trade, the method favored by the Democrats.

January 12 - The Wall Street Journal

While the economic downturn is slowing many construction projects in Dubai, the city's 47-station light rail system is moving forward on schedule.

January 12 - Architectural Record

As U.S.-Cuba relations evolve with a new presidential administration, author Richard Louv argues that officials should be careful about relying on commerce to save the country's decaying urban areas without preserving them.

January 12 - Citiwire

Charles Komanoff reveals a revised new plan that aims to bring congestion pricing to New York City and use its revenue to reduce the price of transit.

January 12 - Grist

The city of Chicago has missed a deadline to approve a pending parking fee ordinance that would have helped the city qualify for $153 million in federal grant money.

January 12 - Crain's Chicago Business

The District of Columbia may be expecting the largest gathering of people in America's history for President Obama's inauguration, but many residents will also be leaving town.

January 12 - The Globe and Mail

San Francisco's federally-funded parking experiment SFPark will be a live test of the theories of dynamic parking management popularized by Donald Shoup.

January 12 - Streetsblog San Francisco

Through festivals, lighting master plans, and creative integrations of artistic interpretations, cities across the world are harnessing the power of light to reinvigorate neglected areas and renew public interest.

January 12 - The Christian Science Monitor

BLOG POST

A common refrain among environmentally-minded planners is: policy X will reduce global warming. So why would anyone be dumb enough to oppose policy X? <br /> <br /> But often, global warming will be the weakest, not the strongest, argument for policy X.

January 11 - Michael Lewyn

In this excerpt from their new book, The Urban Homestead, authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen point out all the ways city dwellers can move away from industrial agriculture.

January 11 - AlterNet

As Liverpool ends its year as the European Union's "Capital of Culture", the city is vastly different and better than it was just a year ago, according to this column.

January 11 - Financial Times

The new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad embodies all of the negative connotations of the American presence in Iraq and provides an example of how not to build an embassy, according to Jonathan Glancey.

January 11 - Guardian

FEATURE

Communities aren't going to get a green code implemented, or any code, without that code appealing to developers, says Sandy Sorlien. They're building our new sustainable places and infilling our old ones.

January 11 - Sandy Sorlien

Creating transit, and planning around it, will be the key to success for metro areas, according to a new report from New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

January 11 - Citiwire

The economic recession is hurting the California High Speed Rail Authority, the lead agency developing the high speed rail network for which the state's voters approved $10 billion in bonds in 2008. With no buyers, the bond money is unavailable.

January 11 - San Francisco Chronicle

A NY Times profile of Suffern, NY focuses on real estate, but in the process creates a miniature of the struggles of all small towns- keeping the historic downtown vibrant, offering varied housing options, and competing with neighboring cities.

January 10 - The New York Times

Turning the page back to 1965, a woman confesses in Ladys Circle Magazine that she hates the suburbs. 'It isn't just monotony; it's stagnation!', she exclaims.

January 10 - Lady's Circle (Posted by ModernMechanix.com)

After decades of restructuring, Pittsburgh is doing significantly better than other cities attempting to recover from the loss of industry. Here's how they did it.

January 10 - The New York Times

If you want to drive your biofuel car between Gary, Indiana to Mobile, Alabama, now you can. A collaboration of states with the Dept. of Energy has created a 886-mile corridor of biofueling stations stretching from Lake Michigan to the Mobile Bay.

January 10 - Clean Cities Now

In this column, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer calls on the Obama Administration to direct its stimulus package towards innovative technologies and "transformative" projects, not just the status quo roads and bridges of the past.

January 10 - Slate